Yeshua Explored
28th February 2022
Flockdown – part 2
Old wineskins
(This series of articles was written at the beginning of the first lockdown in March/April 2020)
Previous articles are still available on the Premier Christian radio website – https://www.premierchristianradio.com/Blogs2/Yeshua-Explored – (until they finally pull the plug!)
Let’s now return to the event that sparked everything off, Flockdown, and concentrate on two possible responses to it. I am going to call them “old wineskins” and “new wineskins”.
“Neither do people pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst; the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17)
The big question regards the origin of the virus, whether we are debating the physical source, or the spiritual source. But the bigger question that the Church should be asking is what the overall effect will be. The Church was caught on the hop in the UK. When lockdown was ordered, unprepared ministry teams had either to crash-course Zoom or to tidy up their Facebook or YouTube accounts, to prepare for the next Sunday service, the first one where folk were not going to physically meet up. Prophecies of God’s judgement abounded from one stream of the church, whereas others were assuring us all of God’s love for all of us, regardless. There was no unity as there was no precedent, this caught us all unawares.
After a few weeks of debate and reflection, strategies were prepared by the mainstream Church, eager to convince the World that these chickens have finally found their heads and actually had all the answers anyway. And what were the answers? Mostly a positive spin because, if God loves us all and particularly loves His Church, then we must cling to this aspect of His character alone, as it’s the only one that gives us hope. We must try and show unity and convince ourselves – and the World – that consequences of lockdown can actually be a good thing. The thoughts of the mainstream Church in the UK are best expressed by one of their leading lights, Pete Greig, founder of the 24/7 Prayer initiative. He claimed that we were actually entering a possible Golden Age. Here are some markers he referred to:
Firstly, the general increase in prayer. He quotes some research recently conducted by Tearfund. Of course more people are praying. They are scared witless, and just as there are no atheists in a plane careering downwards out of control, if they were told that praying to the statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus would reduce their chances of catching the virus, then they would do so, as a means to an end. Most people are not praying because they are convicted of their sins and beg forgiveness for them and wish to live a life in accordance with the teachings of Jesus Christ. They are praying because they want to extend their lives and carry on living them in accordance with their own plans. Some, of course, will pray for the right reasons and we should rejoice in this.
The Tearfund survey also speaks of increased Church attendance. Of course, everything that is now held online is going to have increased attendance, including online gambling, live porn shows and pointless multi-person games. Because, let’s face it, there’s not much else people can do, if they want to be reminded of the outside world. People will come to services for many reasons other than a sincere interest in hearing the Gospel; boredom (something to do to fill up the hours), curiosity (what actually does go on in these strange Christian places?), even cynicism (how on earth are they going to explain all of this?) Of course, some will be genuinely interested and would actually benefit from the experience.
Then Grieg mentions how the national media is picking up positive stories regarding the Church. Nothing that our media do is for helpful reasons, it is always about circulation figures, the bottom line and the need to propagate a partisan view. If they have chosen to show Christians in a positive light, rather than seeing it as a trend we should look for less altruistic motives. These stories would be ‘fillers’ never headlines. The only way this is going to change is if the Church shows real unity and starts to make a discernible impact on society that can’t be ignored. Of course, we hold out hope that this may actually happen, if God wills it according to His purposes.
Finally, he mentions how young people (18-34-year-olds) seem to be leading the charge in these positive developments. This, surely, is a dream that we must all nurture, if we have a concern for God’s Kingdom. A cynical view would be that those who have most to lose should be caring the most, even if it is for selfish reasons. We all want a future and, for some of us oldies, most of it is now in the past! For our youth, the future that has been promised them has suddenly become uncertain.
New wineskins will be discussed next week …
This is an extract from the book, Flockdown: Is the Church out for the count?, available for £5 at https://www.sppublishing.com/flockdown-263-p.asp
